MOGADISHU, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- The UN
migration agency and the European Union are this week training over 60
migrants who opted to return to Somaliland from Libya instead of
continuing their journeys to Europe, the UN agency said on Monday.

The
International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the migrants will
now have access to "Start Your Business" training through the EU-IOM
Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration in the Horn of
Africa.

Jessamy Garver-Affeldt,
head of the IOM Sub-Office in Hargeisa, said the training gives migrants
business planning, procurement, marketing and financial planning
skills.

Ads By Google

"With those skills, the
migrants should be able to open their own businesses, and make them more
profitable and sustainable. For most returnees, this is the next stage
in the reintegration process. But if they choose to work for someone
else, they are also more employable," Garver-Affeldt said.

In
February, explicit photos and videos of Somalis being tortured in
smugglers camps in Libya outraged the public back in Somalia, prompting
President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo to order the evacuation of Somali
migrants allegedly enslaved in Libya.

Garver-Affeldt
said the five-day training is part of a wider 25 million euro EU-IOM
Joint Initiative on Migrant Protection and Reintegration initiative,
which is active in 26 countries in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and
Lake Chad region, and North Africa.

The initiative supports reintegration for returnees in countries of origin.

The
first group of trainees were mainly young men in their 20s and 30s,
with most of them having returned to Somaliland over May and June with
IOM help.

According to the IOM,
after the migrants complete the training, their business plans are
vetted, start-up supplies are procured for them and they receive further
monitoring and mentoring to ensure the sustainability of their
businesses.

"The business training
is part of what we call economic reintegration," said Julia Hartlieb,
senior regional program coordinator for the Joint Initiative in the Horn
of Africa.

"We counsel the migrants
once they return to understand their interests and capacity. We also
work to understand the needs of the communities they live in," Hartlieb
said. "We then train them, or send them back to school, college or
university to ensure that they have the skills to build their own
economic self-sufficiency and to contribute to their communities."

Irregular migration, known as tahriib, has been a popular route out of poverty and unemployment for many Somalilanders.